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A Perfect Game (Superstition)

My informant is Lewis or “Luke” . Luke is 22 and was born and raised in Darien, Connecticut but now attends Chapman University in Orange, California. He is of Irish and Russian descent.

Luke: “So the superstition is, in baseball when someone is pitching a perfect game, anyone on the team of the person that’s pitching the perfect game cannot mention it or bring it up at all or it will be ruined. They just have to act like nothing’s happening. My sophomore year we were playing Taft and Jerry Silvey was 5 innings deep into a no-hitter and I turned to my friend not realizing and asked “Is Jerry throwing a no-hitter?” and my friend looked at me like are you kidding me and I kid you not he struck out the net batter then got a homerun hit off him immediately after.”

When was the first time you heard this superstition?

Luke: “I probably first heard it like third or fourth grade when I got into baseball”

And you believe in it?

Luke: “Oh I definitely believe in it”

This superstition, like many others, revolves around sports. In sports, when playing or watching, it is common to have some ritual whether it be small like wearing the same shoes or abiding to certain superstitious laws of the game. In this case it is the ladder and this superstition is widespread in American baseball. It is common knowledge to those who have played of the existence and partaking of this general rule. Luke even went against the superstition and mentioned the perfect game and he blames the eventual failure of the perfect game on his actions.